In Britain, we tend to regard an entrepreneur whose business flopped as a
has-been. In the US, the same people are regarded as heroes

Ambitious parents are used to spending money on extra tuition. Weekly French lessons from a heavily perfumed chain-smoker were the bane of my early years. My poor brother was unwillingly coerced into elocution.

There are lots of arguments against this approach, of course. But in a week that four-in-10 British five-year-olds missed out on their first choice of primary school, many have come to regard after-school lessons as essential to getting ahead in life. Mandarin classes, music lessons, remedial maths – you name it. The list, like the bill, goes on.

In America, pushy parents have pushed the envelope even further, however. Tiger Mothers (and fathers) are sending their offspring to bootcamp to learn how to become entrepreneurs.

Children as young as five are dispatched to courses like “Girl Startup 101” and “8 and Up”, where they learn how to develop business ideas and raise funding from grown-up investors. The intensive classes teach them how to go about solving problems, devising marketing strategies, and then packaging their ideas in a pitch.

Sometimes, it works. Last month, one enterprising child came up with an idea for a colourful, waterproof, liquid bandage, Boo Boo Goo. She was offered $100,000 for a 25pc stake in her business, on the proviso that she could secure a patent. The girl in question was just six years old.

On the face of it, it seems more ghastly than impressive: the corporate equivalent of a child beauty pageant, where pre-pubescent girls emulate grown-up behaviour. If we want childhood to exist, board meetings, like push-up bras and peroxide hair, are best left to later in life.

There are also question marks over the parents’ motivation. Behind many of the most successful beauty pageant candidates is a pushy mother whose own best years were as a pageant star at high school. Meanwhile, the parents who send their children to learn to be entrepreneurs often have their eye on the potential for a multi-billion dollar bonanza at the end of it. You wouldn’t have to worry about your retirement fund if your child had invented WhatsApp.

But I suspect there is a real kernel of value here as well, however unpalatably it is packaged.

It comes as little surprise that these bootcamps should have taken off in America. After all, this is a country that has cracked entrepreneurship in a way that Europe can only dream of. The last time Britain produced a $10bn tech business, Autonomy, it was snapped up by a bigger American company, Hewlett-Packard, and swiftly dismissed as a fraud (something its founders deny).

Meanwhile, the US has pumped out a long string of multi-billion-dollar businesses founded by people in their late teens or 20s. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, is the most famous recent example, but he shares much in common with Microsoft’s Bill Gates, serial entrepreneur Donald Trump, or less well-known figures like Box chief executive Aaron Levie, or the founders of Airbnb.

When people try to divine America’s secret formula, they usually home in on the fact that the US is more accepting of failure. That is certainly true. In Britain, we tend to regard an entrepreneur whose business flopped as a has-been, someone who had a good stab at becoming the next Zuckerbeg or Gates but ultimately proved that they do not have what it takes.

In the US, the same people are regarded as heroes, who pick themselves up and dust themselves off in the knowledge that they stand a better chance of cracking things next time around. The fastest way to learn, goes the advice, is the school of hard knocks - even Mr Trump has a track record of bankruptcies. People who have tried and failed are considered much better investments than first-timers.

But that is not the only important cultural factor that sets America apart from Europe in the entrepreneurship stakes. The American Dream may be a cliché, but it is also a very real motivating force. People here really, genuinely believe that their invention will be the next to change the world. Silicon Valley’s starry-eyed teenage entrepreneurs are convinced that they have come up with the next Facebook. The estate agent showing you a poky Manhattan apartment is convinced he is on the cusp of building a billion-dollar property empire by flipping properties.

Sending kids to entrepreneurship bootcamp helps that process. It teaches young children that starting a business is within their grasp, not just something that other people do, and equips them with the confidence that will help them raise capital.

The self-belief of American entrepreneurs can sometimes be annoying, and in many cases it is utterly misplaced. But inevitably, some of these people will have what it takes. And because it is America, they will give it a go and find out.